Virginia Pricing Out Loyal Patrons

David Teel

May 23, 2007|By DAVID TEEL Daily Press

Frank Brill is about to lose the prime seats he's enjoyed at Virginia football games for more than 30 years. No matter that he remained loyal during many a lousy season. No matter that he donated thousands of dollars to his alma mater's athletics cause.

In yet another unfortunate but inevitable concession to the Darwinian culture of major college sports, Virginia is pricing Brill out of the market.

Brill, a retired Air Force officer living in Newport News, is understandably peeved. Moreover, he vows to stop contributing to the athletic department's fund-raising arm, the Virginia Athletics Foundation.

"Once again, you have given in to greed over loyalty," Brill wrote in an e-mail to VAF executive director Dirk Katstra.

The source of Brill's ire was the unveiling earlier this month of a new seating plan for Virginia home football games, effective in 2008. Details of the formula, based on giving levels, would confound the sharpest CPA, but the Reader's Digest version is this:

Access to lower-deck seats between the 30-yard-lines will require an annual gift of at least $6,200. That's nearly four times Brill's present level of $1,250 a year, nearly 17 times the minimum $350 gift presently required.

Oh, and don't forget the cost of the season tickets themselves: $230 per seat. That's above and beyond the yearly donation.

Profiteering that would make an oil shyster blush? Good, old-fashioned capitalism? Callous disregard of some dedicated fans? Standard operating procedure in big-time college football?

All of the above.

"I know they have a problem with big donors," Brill said Tuesday. "But this doesn't seem fair to me."

Yes they do, and no it's not.

The problem, in Katstra's words: "We continued to hear frustration from large donors. We could get them seats, but we couldn't get them seats commensurate with what they've given. They'd ask, 'Are you telling me that every other seat that's better than the one you're offering me is occupied by a donor of equal standing or that's giving more?' Well, the answer was always no.

"It's become difficult to explain that, while at the same time we're trying to grow (revenue)."

Ah, revenue. The perennial taffy-pull to make enough scratch from football and men's basketball to fund field hockey and crew.

Katstra projects the Scott Stadium reseating will generate approximately $1 million in additional monies, enough, he said, to counter increased scholarship costs -- the university goosed in-state tuition and fees 8.3 percent for the 2007-08 academic year, 7 percent for out- of-state.

"It more or less keeps us even," Katstra added. "You wish it wasn't so. To make (such a difficult) decision, you wish you would be significantly ahead."

Brill personifies the difficulty, and he's among the scores who have voiced their frustration on message boards and to Katstra and athletic director Craig Littlepage.

A 1955 graduate of Hampton High and 1960 engineering graduate of Virginia, Brill purchased his two seats on the 38-yard-line more than three decades ago.

The team was awful, giving the athletic department no leverage to demand annual gifts from season-ticket holders. But then came bowl bids, national rankings, sellout crowds and stadium expansion.

That the VAF resisted exercising leverage until now is somewhat remarkable -- Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State and Iowa are among those that preceded Virginia in reseating their stadiums.

This appeases Brill not in the least. At age 69 and on a fixed income, he said he cannot afford $6,200 annually to retain his seats. Nor is he interested in maintaining his current gift in exchange for seats on the 10-yard-line. Doubling his gift, according to Katstra, would probably land Brill around the 17-yard-line.

"I'd just as soon watch on TV," Brill said, noting that his two seats would improve considerably if some donors weren't allowed to purchase as many as 12.

More colorfully, Brill wrote to Katstra that "after all my years of loyalty I do not deserve to sit in the end zone or where I have to carry an oxygen bottle and periscope."

Katstra: "I've heard that argument made a number of times in the last week and a half since we announced this and I think depending on how you define loyalty, it's a misperception to say that the donor, or non-donor, who has had tickets for 20 years is more loyal than the donor who makes significant gifts and has had tickets for 20 years or 10 years or five years."

Jerry Gough, a retired administrative law judge living in Ford's Colony, appreciates both sides. When Virginia Tech reseated Lane Stadium two years ago, his four tickets moved from the 35-yard-line to the 25, even though he upgraded from a Bronze Hokie ($500-$999 annually) to a Golden Hokie ($2,000-$4,999).